


In Case You Don't Live Forever.

by orphan_account



Series: Sing To Me Instead [5]
Category: Glee
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Husbands, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Love, M/M, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25616110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Kurt and Blaine have a difficult conversation about life after a close friend passes away.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel
Series: Sing To Me Instead [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1441096
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	In Case You Don't Live Forever.

**Author's Note:**

> warning for implied death of the character Sam Evans.
> 
> Title based on this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlkA0mOzzO4)

Kurt knows where to find Blaine when he rolls over into cold, limp, deserted sheets.

He sits on the floor in the living room, legs tucked up to his chest and back pressed against the side of the couch-- it’s a space that should be purposed with the accompaniment of a side table or something equally furnishing but instead has become a small, confined area of empty hardwood floor that he’s adopted as a sanctuary in wake of the accident.

Kurt rubs the grogginess out of his heavy eyelids (there’s a layer of fatigue just under what he was superficially resting in for a few unsettled hours that he knows he can’t scrub away), stumbling toward his husband and squinting against the low light of a streetlamp from outside that stretches sideways through the blinds.

“Sweetheart?”

Blaine doesn’t look up at him, his tangled, curly head buried in his knees and chest breathing unsteadily, but he does reach out with a trembling hand, and Kurt slides his fingers into it immediately, grasping tightly and twining them together and anchoring both of them to the grounding pull of each other, because being out of bed in the still, surrounding darkness of night has him feeling dangerously close to floating away like a bunch of untethered, feather-light pieces, soft and meaningless as they drift, and he knows Blaine feels the same.

They don’t talk. Kurt stands and Blaine sits and all the while their hands stay connected, till Blaine’s skin is bright white around the creases of his fingers and Kurt can hardly register any feeling in his palm, almost as if Blaine is desperately trying to speak through the intensity of his grip, trying to somehow channel the anguish and the disbelief and the devastation into somewhere that the vast, elusive, shapeless entities will be forced to reside in, and he can finally catch them, pin them down, and throttle them till they’re suffocating and blue and beaten out of his system.

“Honey,” Kurt tugs at him, gently, after some while. He’s not sure how long. “You’re going to be sore. Sit on the couch with me?”

It’s a question because it has to be, because the option for Blaine to say no has to be available if that’s what he needs- and if it is, Kurt will sit down beside him, hands gripped vice-like together as they spend another sleepless night between the arm of the couch and the bookshelf.

But Blaine doesn’t say no, doesn’t say anything, gets up with cramped legs that unfurl slowly and stiffly, practically pulls Kurt down from the force of his weight as he boosts himself up with only the grapple of Kurt’s hand to help him.

And then Kurt’s arm is around his waist as Blaine leans into him, lips pressing against his temple, constant and steady, not pulling away, and they collapse onto the sofa together in a tangle of carefully cradled limbs.

Blaine’s head is soft over his heart, a natural, precious extension of Kurt’s body that he holds tenderly close, and when he begins crying, quiet, breathless weeps of broken noise and lush tears, Kurt bites back the growing lump in his throat, blinks away the burning ache of his own tears, and pets his hair soothingly.

To say their grief comes and goes in waves is entirely the wrong expression, and almost insulting to the weight of it that they carry every single day, every single passing second.

The ocean of grief is always present on the horizon, always a persistent, steady sound in the back of their minds, and sometimes they’re distracted by the softness and warmth of the sand around them, sometimes the setting sun dazzles enough for them to find beauty among the waves, and other times, without conscious choice, they’ve waded neck deep into the relentless water and are so engulfed in it's force it’s a battle to simply find air.

Kurt knows that’s where Blaine is now, trying to stay afloat above the waves and clutching at Kurt’s chest with shaking hands, sobbing into the fabric of Kurt’s shirt as he holds him. It’s heartbreaking to see his husband like this, not any easier than it was the first time it happened and not any less painful than it was the last.

Kurt kisses Blaine’s forehead-- he doesn’t ask him if he wants to talk about it because words are inadequate until they suddenly aren’t, and Kurt knows that moment will come soon enough. For now, he provides all the comfort he possibly can simply through his touch and his presence.

The hardest thing for Kurt at first had been that snap of a second. One, single, slip of a moment that passed him by long before he even registered the beginning of its existence, but suddenly everything was split and perceived in two perspectives. Everything that existed before that second and everything that never would after.

Twelve cars involved in the accident, a terrible pile up due to icy roads and slippery conditions and one wrong turn of somebody’s wheel. Sam was somewhere in the middle; they learned the fine details of where, but it happened in the world that existed after that second, and the early days of that world are blocked out and smoothed over to a heavy, hardened, shapeless lump in Kurt’s mind (except, sometimes, he can access every second of those first few days so vividly sharp that the pain is excruciating, the finer points obsessive, and for his own well being he’s learned he _has_ to make them devoid of color and characteristics.)

He died on impact, in the infinite brevity of a brutal, remorseless second, where the entire world flipped on its head before they could even note that, just one second ago, everything had been so inconceivably different. Kurt couldn’t find consolation in the fact that he didn’t suffer for a long while, but once he did, the comfort was bountiful.

He spends far more time thinking about that second in the world that has existed since than the length of time he actually endured the second for, and though he hardly remembers the specifics of it, it’s like a pivotal spin in the fabric of time that wrenches through his gut, over and over and over again, taking far more from him and his sanity than it’s insignificant duration should allow.

He remembers sound and color more than feeling, which he reasons comes from the shock his body went into. By virtue of remembering color he remembers the total and complete absence of it in Blaine’s eyes. He remembers the clatter of his cell phone hitting the floor. He remembers the whisper of inconsolable horror that left Blaine’s mouth, a sound Kurt never, ever wishes to hear again.

Oddly enough, he remembers wanting to laugh-- some form of hysteria, he thinks, because the absurdity of everything that could crumble apart in a passing second and never be put back together by any force, even those stronger than mere humans can wield, was so stupendous some part of his brain simply refused to believe that it was real.

As his mind thinks back on that second, he pulls Blaine closer against him, till he feels Blaine’s cracking breath hitting against his neck, salty tears rolling down his skin, and his hands rub at Blaine’s goosefleshed skin over and over again.

He thinks about how, at first, he waited for another moment. Where the numbness that had paralyzed his body would suddenly be gone, like waking up drenched in the sweat of a fever that’s broken overnight, and everything would be painful, and real, and bursting in vivid shades of color instead of dull and unbearably dim like it had been.

He waited for a single, breakthrough moment of clarity, where his pain would be exposed and strapped to his sleeve for both him and his husband to see. He waited for that moment to come for Blaine, as well. He waited for them to roll into each other’s arms and sob debilitating tears through the heartache of it, and then finally, finally begin to heal.

And ironically, that’s the only thing that never came in a single moment.

He doesn't know why he visualized his healing as something he could travel to, reach, achieve, and suddenly, somehow, be on the other side of.

Not when now, two months in, he remembers from previous experience that it’s something you never truly heal from, not totally, and there is no certain point for them to reach and cross. Only time to endure and a journey of pain to bear that comes with highs and lows and healing that never ends and countless times that require picking themselves back up and starting from the beginning all over again.

He thinks about how, even decades after the loss of his Mother, and years after the loss of Finn, he isn’t any more experienced or practiced or skilled at navigating grief than he was the first time. It isn’t easier. He still makes foolish wishes, yearns for things he _knows_ he can’t get back, and expects life to somehow produce results he’s aware it isn’t capable of.

He wonders if every time he experiences the death of a loved one will still feel like the first time, brand new and fresh and uncharted, unfamiliar, and so, so, heartbreakingly familiar at the same time.

Blaine’s tears slow after some time, and Kurt doesn’t like to think that one person's grief is more difficult than anybody else’s, but he’s learned so clearly that Blaine is carrying a lining of something heavier than he is, and he’s also learned that that doesn’t invalidate his own grief.

He grips the fabric of Kurt’s shirt, and when he speaks, his voice cracks with disuse.

“It’s so pointless.”

It’s almost more than Kurt can bear, to hear Blaine speak with such raw despair, but he stays quiet and lets him talk through everything he’s feeling.

“All of it, it’s so pointless.” The only way to describe Blaine’s voice is heart-broken. Kurt’s fingers scratch through his curly hair, wait patiently. “It’s so fucking pointless.”

Kurt knows that Blaine is just going to keep repeating the same thing if he doesn’t prompt him, guide him, travel through this beside him.

“What is, honey?”

“Life,” Blaine snaps, exhaustion and anger and fear, and Kurt knows it’s not at him. It’s not at anybody.

Who could it possibly be at?

Kurt wonders sometimes if this is why people do believe in God, so they have somebody to blame.

Kurt doesn’t say anything, just continues to stroke him.

“It’s-- every second is so pointless, because it could all change, it could all just be gone, it could all just disappear and then what did any of it mean?”

This happens, sometimes, at these darkest, most desolate hours of the night, when they’re surrounded by nothing but their grief and the pain of talking through it, getting to the heart of it, sometimes elicits things they don’t actually mean, things they don’t actually believe. Perhaps out of desperation, or denial, or even just overwhelming sadness.

“It could be you,” Blaine breathes, and Kurt’s eyes shut. “It could be me. At any moment. You can say it till you’re blue in the face, that you’d love me forever, but there’s nothing you, or I, or anyone else can do to stop that from changing in an instant.”

“I wouldn’t stop loving you if I died,” Kurt tells him then, seriously, because it’s fucking terrifying, to try and think about where any of this leads, where any of them go after this and what would happen if he lost Blaine the way they lost Sam, or Finn, or his Mother.

But Kurt believes firmly that the unconditional love he has for Blaine would surpass any of that. He certainly has enough love in his heart for those whose loss he’s carried with him for years to last him infinite lifetimes.

“You can’t promise me that,” Blaine argues, with a trembling shake of his head. “You can never promise me that. Because he-- he u-used to say that he’d always be there for me, and he told m-me… he told me the _day_ before that he’d see me soon, and he never can, he never will…”

Blaine breaks off in a mess of guttural sobs, and Kurt cries too, tears falling into Blaine’s curls and hand cupping around the back of his head. These are things he doesn’t want to think about but so blatantly can’t run away from, not with the way tragedy has played its hand in his life, and he likes to think he’s prepared for the worst but he never truly is.

Is anyone?

“I don’t want to lose you,” Blaine sobs into his shoulder. “I don’t want to lose you but I will, at some point, at any point.”

The mourning of things not yet lost is a side effect Kurt learned early on came from experiencing death. The paranoia, and the constant fear-- it’s all things that one might not assume would hold such prevalence but unjustly does, as if they haven’t already been beaten by enough.

He wants to tell Blaine that he can’t live like that, with that mindset at every possible second, but who is he to say that? When he spent years dealing with the looming fear of losing his Dad at any moment? When his family went from three, to two, to four, and back to three in less than a decade?

Life is temporal, and delicate, and the terror that notion brings is profound.

“Sweetheart,” Kurt sniffles, pulling back a little so he can see Blaine’s bloodshot, red rimmed eyes. “I’m here right now. We have each other right now, and right now, I love you. I love you so much. I will always love you. The grief I’d experience if I lost you is the price I’ve paid to spend every moment I possibly can loving you so immensely, and that will never be a fair cost, but it’s worth it to get to hold you for every second that I do.”

Blaine turns into him, face crumpled and shoulders shaking so violently it physically shatters something in Kurt’s heart.

“I can’t, I-I I j-just c-can’t…”

It’s a slow-moving process, the flow of conversation between them during these times, nestled in between longer stretches of physical communication that comes from roaming fingers and the feel of a rising chest under one’s cheek, a steadily beating heart, the home of empathetic arms, and Kurt’s learned that Blaine’s body has a language of sorrow different from his words, that sometimes conveys the most tender, vulnerable fears of his heart when insufficient words fall flat.

So he holds his husband for an hour of silence before either of them speak again, and it passes slowly and quickly in that cruel way only time can, like they can’t endure it fast enough and somehow, it’s slipping through his fingers uncontrollably in the same moment.

Kurt’s shirt is soaked from Blaine’s tears, his own cheeks cracked and brittle with dried tear tracks, and it’s always a sense of physical relief to cry, always a bit of the burden alleviated from the weight of his heart, but they both know that even as it feels lighter, something will come back to fill it’s heaviness the next time they’re fighting against the merciless current of the water.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine whispers, and Kurt squeezes his shoulder, swipes his thumb over the slope of it. “I’m sorry for saying that, earlier. I don’t actually think life is pointless.”

Kurt knows this. Sam’s death has been nothing short of a tragic, brutal slap to the face for both of them, for _everyone_ who felt it’s blow, a reminder that every single second of life has merit, all equally important and vital and, when separated into distinct moments, all as valuable as the culmination of the greater something they lead to.

“I know you don’t, sweetheart.” Kurt kisses his forehead reassuringly. “It certainly feels that way sometimes. I get it.”

“I feel helpless,” Blaine confesses then, broken and vulnerable. “And I keep looking for answers, but there aren’t any. I want to make sense of why something like this would happen, and I can’t and that... God, that's so fucking frustrating.” He wipes a tear away from the corner of his hazel eyes with the pad of his thumb, voice squeaking in a way that tugs sharply at Kurt’s heart. “It’s so unfair.”

They come back to the same phrases, phrases that explain how they’re feeling but don’t quite capture it fully, because-- there’s no expression of words that _can_ adequately describe the way they're feeling, even after they spend hours searching for them tirelessly. There’s some that get close-- gutted, devastated, heartbroken, tragedy, _unfair_ \-- and it’s unsettling, to have to keep landing on these words that only scratch the surface of the pain in their hearts simply because there’s nothing better.

Unfair is a word Kurt hears Blaine use often, one he punches at over and over and over again, just on the cusp of capturing the void that Sam’s death has left behind but falling so astonishingly short of the injustices of fate it’s infuriating.

“I feel guilty,” Blaine continues, and Kurt wraps him up tighter, kisses his hair again. “I feel so fucking guilty that I’m still alive and he isn’t. I feel guilty that I’m not cherishing life. I feel guilty that I have so much of it left in front of me when it was stolen from him. He was innocent. He was undeserving. This shouldn’t have happened to him.”

Kurt knows these feelings all too well, and somehow, it’s like a whole new dimension of pain to hear them voiced from the heart of the person he loves most.

“I feel guilty for even just _feeling_ guilty.” Blaine’s hands tighten in his shirt as he sighs. “I feel guilty when I’m happy, when I’m laughing, when I’m enjoying life like he never can again. I feel guilty for wanting to move forward.”

Kurt thinks back on a memory he's always cradled close to his heart, that's carried him like a sturdy ship through the most treacherous storms in his life.

"You know, the first Friday night dinner after my Mom died, Dad tried to cook a chicken." Kurt chuckles despite everything, because the beauty of a memory, the beauty of a single, passing moment, is that sometimes, no matter the circumstance, it possesses the ability to always provide a burst of joy. "He cut into it, and it was raw. And I mean like, bright pink. I still don't know how he managed to cook it so terribly." Blaine's fingers clench around his hip, what Kurt has learned is the equivalent of a chuckle in the language of his mourning body. "We looked at each other, and then we laughed. And... it felt like we weren't supposed to. It wasn't time yet. How could we have possibly been laughing at a time like that?"

Kurt can hear the soft whisper of Blaine's tears falling again, and he runs a hand through his husband's hair. "I thought, at first, that feeling joy after my Mother's death felt like I wasn't honoring her. Like laughing again was... just letting her pass by."

They sit in silence for a few minutes, Kurt's fingers steadily carding through Blaine's hair.

"But in that moment... we forgot that we shouldn't have been laughing. And you know what I realized?" Kurt asks softly, and Blaine squeezes his hip again, sniffling. "The best way to honor somebody is to live for them. Feel joy for them. Laugh for them. It's... it'll never make sense why Sam isn't here anymore and we still are. But Sam... well, he didn't let a single moment escape him. The greatest gift you can give him as his best friend, in return for every memory he gave you, is to continue to live like that for him. He would never want you to feel guilty about that. Just like my Mom would never want me to feel guilty for every moment of joy I've experienced since her death."

Blaine's quiet for a long while, breathing deeply against Kurt's side, and Kurt focuses on the feel of the hair on his forearm under his sweeping thumb, the weight of Blaine's arm slung across his waist, the scent of his curls tucked against his shoulder.

"I still feel him," Blaine whispers eventually. "I don't... I've wanted to believe in God so desperately. I don't. I just... But-- I still feel him around me. I feel his personality and see his smile and hear his ridiculous impressions. I feel the way I loved him. I believe in that."

"I think that's the beauty of life," Kurt contemplates, swirling his fingers over Blaine's skin. "It carries on after death. The body... it's so inconsequential compared to the soul. I believe in that, too. I believe in the memories we will always have of him."

Kurt had stayed away at first, from the things that reminded him of Sam: pictures, videos, objects, places. He had thought it would be too difficult to venture through, and it had been, in the very beginning. But it was Blaine who had delved head first into everything, at a time Kurt didn't expect, when he came home from work just a week after everything and found him on the couch watching a taped recording of the Nationals performance from his and Sam's senior year.

How liberating it was, to carefully toe off his shoes, ask for the permission to join his husband, to sit by his side and watch with him, listen to Blaine's stories he'd never heard, from a heartfelt perspective he'd never known. To then pull out his own photos, and talk about them with Blaine, travel through the memories they'd experienced together and separately, to laugh until their sides hurt, to remember how much wonderful life Sam had lived in such a short amount of time. To remember every beautiful, magnificent thing that came from his existence.

His talent. His compassion. His humor. His hobbies. His endless outpouring of love for those around him.

"I didn't tell him enough, how much he meant to me," Blaine laments.

"He knew," Kurt replies gently, remembers so many instances where Sam told him so. "He knew how much you admired him. How much his friendship meant to you. He cared for you deeply."

"I don't tell _you_ enough either, how much you mean to me, how much I love you." Blaine's voice is shaky, and Kurt feels another tear drip down his cheek, right where he thought no more could possibly fall.

"Sweetheart..."

"What I said earlier... I know you'd still love me, if you died. I'd feel it forever, with all of my heart. And you... you have to know I'll always love you, no matter what happens. Always. I love you more than anything, more than I could ever tell you."

"Oh, honey, I know," Kurt sniffles, because he knows there's a spot, deep in his heart, right at the center of him, that exists for only the two of them, and no matter where they are, no matter what happens, they'll always prevail there together. He knows it exists in Blaine's heart too, and that there's an invisible, ever expanding string that connects them to each other from those two places.

"You're everything to me, everything, and it... it would kill me if something happened and you d-didn't know that," Blaine looks up at him then, and his eyes are so wide and reflective and honest Kurt thinks that every star in the universe could be painted inside their unguarded depth. In Blaine's eyes he sees love, a burning of what exists so richly in his own soul, a beautiful, safe home that he'll always be welcomed into, with love copious enough to mend over his faults, graciously accept his imperfections, and cherish him exactly the way he is without any expectations.

And the sight of those eyes are so lovely, Kurt has little choice but to stare back at them with the same promise in his own, as if their eyes are a medium that allows their souls to pass straight through the barrier of each other's bodies.

"You're everything to me, too," he repeats, and he may not have the answers, may not have the solutions, or the knowledge, or the ability to promise Blaine forever by his side. But he has that truth, and every ounce of conviction inside of himself that believes it undoubtedly. "I love you. So much. More than you'll ever know."

He kisses Blaine then, just a simple slot of slow lips, and there's heartache, pain, and unconditional love enough to balance out what once felt like a distance left by both that could never be filled. Blaine's eyelashes flicker open slowly when he pulls back, clumped wet and gentle, and he gazes over Kurt's face for a moment before laying his head down on Kurt's shoulder.

"Remember when he accidentally broke that new lamp you had just bought?" Blaine says, and Kurt can hear the beginning of a tender, fond smile on his lips. The memory is one of exasperation, and humor so spectacular and spontaneous no amount of timing in the world could've planned it. Kurt laughs, head falling back against the couch as he basks in the rapturous, unbottled joy that can arise from a single, wonderful, unreplicated second.

"Tell me the story again?"

He holds Blaine tightly in his arms as he listens to him retell the memory with a watery smile and tear filled eyes.

There's a few truths that Kurt has learned over the years in the midst of every other uncertainty. He's learned that love comes in abundance and time doesn't, and that neither of those quantities should be taken for granted. He's learned that shame is a wasted emotion and it never hurts to hold those around him just a little bit tighter, for just a little bit longer. He's learned that love can be manifested through many different forms of light and sound and sight and feeling, and that no one is ever truly gone.

He's learned that there will be nights just as difficult as this one ahead of them forever, and that the end of their conversation, the rise of the dawning sun, doesn't bring the closure of their grief along with it. 

He's learned that no one can promise what tomorrow will bring, and that a second can be as devastating as it can be joyous.

And in this particular, isolated, passing second, he's blessed with the rare and beautiful ability to simply exist, and live, and hold his sweetheart close, remember the everlasting love from those and for those who have come and gone before him, who are still with him now and forever, and it's his duty to them to make the absolute most of it and every second that comes in the future just like it, because there's an entire lifetime to be lived in every single moment he's given.

**Author's Note:**

> "no matter the year, circumstance, or strifes everyday you're alive is a blessing. make the most of today and every day you are given. tomorrow is not promised." -Naya Rivera.
> 
> This is something I wrote to help me through Naya's death, and I hope it brings some comfort to anybody who needs it. Naya was a fierce, resilient, beautiful soul, and I love her dearly.
> 
> Much love. <3


End file.
